Adwan
The Adwanic language, (English: Adwan, French: Adouanne, Spanish: Aduana, Pacardian: Adwana, Adwan: Aðwana) is an inflecting, isolated language. It is the language of the Adwanic People, or the Chiðauma Aðwani. Features: *Adwan is a fusionally synthetic language. This means that words change depending on their usage (I am would be það, yet you are could either be þus or þuš, depending on the number). *Adwan also expresses a very agglutinative nature when it comes to verbs, which conjugated by stringing affixes together. *Verbs in Adwan are conjugated to three persons, two numbers, three tenses, three aspects, four voices, and four moods. *Adwan lacks auxilliary verbs and modal verbs, instead making extensive use of affixes to change modality, aspect, tense, mood and voice. *While Adwan expresses traits for a pro-dropping language, personal pronouns are commonly used to accustom the AV3 rule. *Adwan declines nouns for number, grammatical gender, and grammatical case. *Adwan has 7 cases; nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative and vocative, and 2 numbers; singular and plural. *Adwan is a syllable-timed language. Every syllable in Adwan gets about the same amount of length -- except for the rare syllables that follow geminates. *Loanwords to Adwan are generally rare; about 15-25% of Adwan's vocabulary is shared with other European languages (while mesa means table in Spanish, it means island in Adwan). *Coordinating conjunctions have two, very different forms, which depend on what they're connecting. While clauses use traditional, separate conjunctions, listed items use proclitics, or morphemes that work like affixes and depend on the word they're attached to, but are grammatically independant. *Adwan is syllable timed; stress is always put on the penultimate syllable unless stated otherwise (acute accents over vowels show irregular stress rules, which are incredibly common). Usage Lexicon The Adwanic Lexicon can be found here. Phrases Adwanic Phrases can be found here. Phonology Adwan empoys 30 consonants, 7 vowels and 13 diphthongs. Consonants *The phoneme /b/ does not exist in Adwan. *The phoneme /ŋ/ is not an allophone of n. /n/ does not velarize before velar consonants. *The phoneme /ʝ/ is an allophone of /j/ when /j/ precedes vowels. *The phoneme /ç/ is an allophone of /x/ and /h/ when /x/ and /h/ precede /j/ or /ʝ/. *The phoneme /ɬ/ is not an allophone of /l; however, l̥ is an allophone of ɬ. *The phoneme /ʔ/ is not represented in writing, nor does it have any significant effect (it is purely dialectical). *When voiceless plosives end a word, they are typically aspirated. Vowels *e is an allophone of ɛ. Diphthongs In diphthongs, the phoneme ɛ changes to e. Phonotactics Syllables in Adwan follow a relatively simple set of rules in formation. Usually, they follow a CV pattern, though it is not uncommon to see CCV, CCCV, and CCVCC. Typically, the generalized rule for syllables in Adwan is ©©©V©©©. Note, diphthongs are considered''' one''' vowel, and ch is considered one consonant. However, the end to words in Adwan is limited, as certain letters cannot end an undeclined word: *Nouns in Adwan end in either a, c, cð, ch, ċ, č, d, ð, ď, e, f, ff, g, gh, i, k, l, ll, m, n, ng, ngc, o, p, pp, r, s, sð, ss, š, t, tð, tt, u, v, y, z, ż, ž Alphabet & Orthography The Adwanic alphabet consists of 31 letters: A C Ċ Č D Ð Ď E F G H I J K L M N O Ö P R Þ S Š Þ U V W Y Z Ż Ž Note: Þþ is collated right after Šš. The letters Bb, Qq, ''and ''Xx do not exist in Adwan, neither in the alphabet or in loanwords. Instead, b tends to become v or p, kw is written as cw, and ks is written as gs. Like the phoneme b, gz does not exist in Adwan. Diacritic and etc. notes: *Dots were used to affricate alveolar fricatives. *Háčeks were used over alveolar consonants to represent post-alveolar consonants. #In digraphs representing post-alveolar consonants, ‹c› is used to represent post-alveolar fricatives, and ‹g› to represent post-alveolar affricates. *Accented vowels do not count as separate characters, for they do not represent new phonemes, therefore vowels with accents are not in the alphabet. *Digraphs are not represented in the alphabet. *In the thorn's name (þ, þor), the ‹n› was dropped due to nasals never coming after r'', unless they belong to another syllable. Latin Alphabet Extensions Adwan employs 11 letters that are foreign to the basic Latin alphabet. These letters are considered letters on their own, rather than letters with diacritics. *‹Ċ,ċ› represents the phoneme ‹ts›, as in the English word ''ca'ts''. *‹Č,č› represents the phoneme ‹tʃ›, as in the English word ''ch'ocolate. *‹Ð,ð› represents the phoneme ‹ð›, as in the English word th'erefore. ''When word final, represents the same sound as þ, though when word final and has an apostraphe, it retains the voiced sound. Note, however, apostraphe's are not used in official writing. *‹Ď,ď› represents the phoneme ‹dʒ›, as in the English word 'j'''am. *‹Ġ,ġ› represents the phoneme ‹ɣ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is a ‹g›, but smoother and in the back of the throat, almost like a ‹g› version of ‹x›; it is represented as in the Greek word γ'άλα. This grapheme is actually written as g with a háček, but is written with a breve due to unicode difficulties. *‹Ł,ł› represents the phoneme ‹ɬ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is almost like saying ‹š› and ‹l› together but quickly, or blowing while your tongue is curled back. It is represented as in the Welsh word '''ll'oyd. *‹Ö,ö› represents the phoneme ‹ø›, which doesn't exist in English. The closest sound would be the '''ou in w'''ou'ld'', only a bit higher. It is represented as in the French word p'''eu', or the Norwegian word ''s'ø't''. *‹Š,š› represents the phoneme ‹ʃ›, as in the English word ''ca'sh'.'' *‹Ż,ż› represents the phoneme ‹dz›, as in the English word ''car'ds'. '' *‹Ž,ž› represents the phoneme ‹ʒ›, as in the English word ''vi'si'on, or as in the French word j'''e. Acute Accent; Stress & Vowel Change Adwan adds acute accents (and double acute accents to all vowels with umlauts) to all vowels to add stress if the stress isn't on the penultimate syllable. *‹Á,á› represents stress on the ‹a›. *‹É,é› represents stress on the ‹e›. *‹Í,í› represents stress on the ‹i›. *‹Ó,ó› represents stress on the ‹o›. *‹Ő,ő› represents stress on the ‹ö›. *‹Ú,ú› represents stress on the ‹u›. *‹Ý,ý› represents stress on the ‹y›. Geminate Orthography Adwan, for the most part, is quite a phonemic language, though it does carry its own writing rules. Mainly everything is written as it is pronounced, and everything is pronounced as it is written. Diphthongs even have special diacritics that show they're diphthongs, because vowel clusters are separately pronounced. One thing Adwan does have, however, is gemination. Gemination in Adwan can be quite tricky, for just because a consonant is doubled, doesn't mean it should be geminated. In the Polish loanwoard Ďďovnyca, or earthworm, the two ‹ď›'s are pronounced. Gemination is triggered by two things: double consonants, and an accute accent. It does not matter if pronunciation already falls on the vowel, an acute is added to the vowel before the double consonants to produce gemination. Thus, double consonants that are word initial are always pronounced. Note: gemination occurs in the locative for the first declensions: *''Afkra'' → Áffkrena / Áffkrenang *''Šuska → ''Šússkena / Šússkenang *''Arevyna → ''Arevýnnena / Arevýnnenang Geminations in Monophthong/Diphthong Separators Seldomly do separators have to geminate, but it's quite possible. However, geminations in separators do not exist, instead lenghthening the vowel by double, or even triple the actual length. The "h" in separators are doubled. For example: Cowhu /ko̯u.u/, "Flood", geminates in the Locative singular to Cówhhus, which is pronounced /ko̯uw:us/ Cwydhu, "Wales", geminates in the Locative singular to Cwýdhhus, which is pronounced either /kwɪ:us/ or /kwɪʔ:us/ Fortunately as it is, the need for monophthong and diphthong separators are a relatively literary feature, for most words that use them and have adjacent vowels are literary words (compare the three words for organization: scyskyma, organiseišön, and łowhogha). Syntax & Morphology Adwan is an inflecting language, where many words change their form depending on their function in a sentence. This may pose a problem for many English speakers, Chinese speakers, or other speakers of analytical languages, for analytical languages depend on word order to convey their meaning, as opposed to morphology. Adwan, as an inflecting language, inflects verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numbers depending on their function in a sentence, or their case (or person, mood, voice, tense and aspect, for verbs). Word Order Because of the inflections that go on in Adwan, word order is generally a lot freer than it would be if it didn't have all those inflections. Adwan generally follows an SVO word order, hough many word orders are feasible due to Adwan's extensive inflectional system. However, unlike many inflecting languages, word order does not establish mood in Adwan, but is merely used as a tool of avoiding epenthesis. Word order in Adwan is, for lack of a better word, shallow and moderately unimportant, though the use of SVO, SOV and VOS is all too commonly used and recommended. Relative Clauses Place Manner Time Place manner and time order is not strict at all in Adwan, except for one rule: time must '''always go after the verb. The usual order in Adwan is time place manner, although quite literally, there is no restriction to order, as long as the time goes after the verb. When dealing with Place manner time, the verb always precedes the temporal phrase, therefore word order depends on the position of the temporal phrase. Time Place Manner *''I will go tomorrow to school by car.'' *''Tarei mač šússkena zuð swacgé.'' Time Manner Place *''I will go tomorrow by car to school.'' *''Tarei mač zuð swacgé šússkena.'' Place Manner Time *To school by car I will go tomorrow. *''Šússkena zuð swacgé tarei mač.'' Place Time Manner *''To school I will go tomorrow by car.'' *''Šússkena tarei mač zuð swacgé.'' Manner Time Place *''By car I will go tomorrow to school.'' *''Zuð swacgé tarei mač šússkena.'' Manner Place Time *''By car to school I will go tomorrow.'' *''Zuð swacgé šússkena tarei mač.'' Tarei (Ta + rei) -> I will go; mač --> tomorrow; šússkena (loc of šuska) --> (to, at) school; zuð --> with, via; swacgé (abl of swač) --> car. Cases Adwan has seven cases to which decline its nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numbers. They are the nominative, the genitive, the accusative, the dative, the ablative, the locative and the vocativ, and are always given in that specific order. Prepositions Prepositions in Adwan can be quite tricky, for not only are there a good number of them, but many of them are incredibly dependant on cases. A preposition can have up to three different meanings, some even more; the distinction between each meaning lies in the case used, however. For example: the preposition After, or Dgengcwí, means After in the ablative, and behind in the locative. While a connection between the two can be made, there are still even more ambigious prepositions, such as the preposition for on, or ch, which refers to a general point in time in the dative, refers to a general idea in the ablative, and suggests an item locationally being on something in the locative. Thus, it is vital to know which case goes with not only which prepositions, but with which prepositional meanings. Prepositions and their Cases Table Below is a table showing an overview of the Adwanic and English prepositions and the cases they belong to. Nouns Nouns in Adwan are categorized into one of three genders which are commonly found in other European languages. Masculine, Feminine, ''and ''Neuter. However, unlike many languages, genders do not necessarily hold special endings, therefore, the gender of a noun must be memorized. It is, possible, however, to determine the gender of a noun by its declension paradigm. Nouns in Adwan are declined according to grammatical case, number, and gender. However, it must be noted that, in Adwanic nouns, numbers are on a steady collapse, leaving number to be highly dependant on adjectives and determiners for many classes. Apart from genders, nouns are divided into other subclasses. These classes depend on their ending, i.e. Afkra would be declined differently than Pőž, even if they are both masculine. The different classes of nouns are shown below, each class retaining its own declensional pattern. *Masculine #Smooth Nouns (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ll, n, ng, ngc, s, š, tð) #Rough Nouns (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž) #Boxy Nouns (o, e) *Feminine #Smooth Nouns (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ll, n, ng, ngc, s, š) #Rough Nouns (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž) #Round Nouns (a, u) *Neuter #Textured (both Smooth and Rough) Nouns (c, cð, ch, ċ, č, d, ð, ď, f, ff, g, gh, k, l, ll, m, n, ng, ngc, p, pp, r, s, sð, ss, š, t, tð, tt, v, z, ż, ž) #Boxy Nouns (i, y) However, one thing must be noticed. Nouns in Adwan are distributed in a less arbitrary fashion, with nouns actually having some sort of connection to their gender. This does no prove true to all nouns, but it holds steady for the majority. Along with that, all living things are either masculine or feminine. Note, when verbs change into nouns, their class of verb determines the gender. Declension Paradigms Masculine Smooth Nouns Nouns ending with a smooth consonant (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ll, n, ng, ngc, s, š, tð). Rough Nouns Nouns ending with a rough consonant (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž). Round Nouns Nouns ending in a round vowel (o, e) Feminine Smooth Nouns Nouns ending with a smooth consonant (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ll, n, ng, ngc, s, š, tð). Rough Nouns Nouns ending with a rough consonant (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž). Boxy Nouns Nouns ending in a boxy vowel (a, u) Neuter Textured Nouns Nouns ending with a smooth consonant and a rough consonant (c, cð, ch, ċ, č, d, ð, ď, f, ff, g, gh, k, l, ll, m, n, ng, ngc, p, pp, r, s, sð, ss, š, t, tð, tt, v, z, ż, ž). Boxy Nouns Nounas ending with a boxy vowel (i, y) Note, nouns may go through certain phonetic changes. For example, two consecutive i's or e's are considered illegal in declensions, so if the last syllable has an ‹i› and the declension adds another syllable with an ‹i›, the ‹i› in the syllable before the new syllable changes to a ‹y›. For example, the accusative for textured neuter nouns adds a ‹í›; therefore, adding that to a word like piċ would change the ‹i› to a ‹y›, therefore leaving the noun to be pyċí. With e's, the first e is just deleted, like in veder. The locative of the neuter textured nouns declensions adds ‹em›, so adding this to a noun that already has an ‹e› in the last syllable causes the ‹e› in the syllable that precedes the ending to drop, leaving veder in the locative to be vedrem, not vederem. Note, however, that these changes only occur if an extra affix is being added. If a final vowel changes, nothing is omitted. Adjectives Adjectives in Adwan only have 3 declension classes, one declension per each gender. All adjectives must agree with the gender of the noun they're describing. Adjectives in Adwan have no specific ending without a specific gender. Since miwa is masculine, then big would be rora. However, if someone wanted to have a feminine noun such as cyrðu, or ocean, rora ''would have to change to ''roro to match the gender. Masculine adjectives end in -a, Feminine adjectives end in -o, and Neuter adjectives end in -y. Nominalizing Articles Adwan's nouns do not carry articles, and neither do adjectives... for the most part. Nominalizing articles exist in Adwan for the purpose of treating an adjective and a verb like a noun, therefore, when a noun is needed, the nominalizing article comes in before any adjective or verb and modifies it into a noun, whilst letting it keep its adjective declension should it be an adjective. Nominalizing Articles only come in one form, though it is not definite or indefinite, merely an oblique form. Nominalizing articles replace the use for the noun "ones" or "things" in most cases, so to say She ate the blue thing, one would simply say She ate the blue (Ena mozcegí yċ jeðy.). The neuter gender is generally used when the gender of the item is unspecified. Nominalizing articles also replace the usage of the nouns "person", "man", "woman", "boy", "girl", or "child". For example, to say An old man eats, one could simply omit man and decline old to the masculine, therefore leaving the sentence to be An old eats (Að šöna mozce.). Along with the other usages provided, nominalizing articles could allow speakers to omit objects if they were already specified before, and if each object had an adjective (if two objects have the same adjectives but different genders, then the same process could be applied, however, if they are of the same gender and have the same adjectives, this cannot work). If someone was to ask Did the big cat eat the little mouse? Cat and mouse, since they were already stated, and they have their own adjectives, big and little, then the objects could be omitted and the reply would be Yes, the big ate the little (Ö, að rora mozcegí aðe ina.) instead of Yes, the big cat ate the little mouse. Along with modifying adjectives, nominalizing articles are also used for gerunds, as shown later on in the article. = Affixes Nouns and Adjectives in Adwan carry a number of derivational morpheme markers that add or change meaning. Like many affixes in other languages, they slightly add on to the meaning of a noun. For example, the affix -čna means in essence of, very much like the affix ''-ness'' in English. However, many affixes in English all go back to this same affix in Adwan. In the English word Brotherhood, the affix -hood has the same meaning as -ness; in Adwan, to say brotherhood, one would say brother, or povla (note, brother is an irregular noun that does not follow the same gender pattern as most nouns) and add on the affix, leaving it to be povlačna, ''or ''brotherness. Affixes are added on to the undeclined noun, for the noun is declined after the affix has been added on.' Below is a list of affixes -- mostly suffixes -- used to alter meaning in Adwan. Note: do not confuse ''derivational affixes with diminutives and augmentives. Note, gemination does NOT occur with affixes. Double consonants are both pronounced. Adjective comparisons function by use of prefixes, which are also shown below. Personal Pronouns Relative Pronouns Relative pronouns in Adwan, like pronouns, are irregularly declined. They decline for case only and not for gender or number, and follow a rather regular pattern (though the declensions in themselves are quite irregular as they don't follow the regular patterns). Adwan has one relative pronoun, and its declination works something like the French relative pronouns of qui and que, and Latin's declension, where it declines according to its part of speech function rather than the noun its connecting or relating to. The relative pronoun in Adwan is Sað, and it has all the functions of English's relative pronouns that, which, who, whom, etc. Interrogative Pronouns Interrogative pronouns pose questions while taking form of what would be nouns. However, most words that do pose questions are actually reversed adverbs, where rather than going after the verb, the precede the verb. Adwan's structure does not depend wholly on this, however, as simply using intonation is enough to pose a question. Adwan has rather odd interrogative pronouns, that, although not found in English typically, can be found in other languages. However, like other Indo-European languages, what is identical to the relative that ''in Adwan. All Adwanic interrogative pronouns end in að'' and follow the same declension pattern as sað. Note, adverbial forms of each interrogative pronoun are listed next to each pronoun. How: Łað/Łuðyr How many: Gwað/Gwacgy What: Sað/Scy What kind: Flað/Velá Where: Chað/Doðyr When: Vað/Feðyr Who: Tað/Sciðyr Why: Dgað/Scaðyr Demonstratives Demonstratives, words such as this, that, those, these, etc. Adwan differentiates between two distances, near me (zuð zcam) and far from me ''(''sað zcam), or more properly known as proximal and distal. #'Proximal demonstratives' mark objects that are near to the speaker. The equivalent to this in English is the demonstrative this and these. #'Distal demonstratives' mark objects that are far from both the speaker and the addressee. English has the demonstratives that and those, and archaically had yon and yonder, but those aren't used as much anymore. Demonstratives in Adwan are declined for number, gender and case, although the declensions they go through are, typically, irregular and don't follow the rules of typical declensions. Proximal: Þa/Þo/Þid - This Þa, the proximal demonstrative in Adwan, marks objects that are close to the speaker. It is the equivalent to this and these in English. Distal: Sa/So/Sy - That Sa, the distal demonstrative in Adwan, marks objects that are far from both speaker and addressee. It is the equivalent to that and those in English. Numbers Numbers in Adwan are quite simple and consistent. They utilize an easy set of affixes that change with each place. Adwan only provides numbers from 0-9, with the rest using affixes to change numbers. Adwan declines all its numbers for gender, though only 1-9 is shown. Verbs Verbs in Adwan have gone through the most drastic changes in Adwan, going from relatively agglutinative to relatively synthetic, although traces of agglutinative conjugating can still be found. Adwan is a heavily inflected language, in nouns and in verbs, and ironically, while Adwan does not agglutinate its verbs like it used to, its conjugation system is pretty hefty. Note, however, the simplification and reduction of agglutination in Adwan, compared to Old Adwan: : Old Adwan Haétuìklyígnanþaùlyíðaù zeávjoškað. Ha-é-tuì-klyígnan-þaù-ly-íðaù zeá-vjoška-ð. 1.sg.-past-perfective-clean-inceptive-opinionative-conditional.sg 1st.posessive-house-accusative.sg I would (have) wanted to start cleaning my house. : Modern Adwan : (Jag) Faðyð lloreg peghan aðe sapane segha vioški. (Jag) Fað-yð llor-eg pegh-an að-e sapan-e segha viošk-i. '' (1.sg) have-conditional want-masc.sg.participle clean-infinitive nominalizing.article-accusative.sg clean.gerund-accusative my.fem.sg-genitive house-genitive. I would (have) wanted to start the cleaning of my house. Conjugation Verbs in Adwan conjugate to number (sungular and plural), person(first, second and third), tense(past, present and future), aspect(perfective, and imperective), mood(indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative), and voice(active, passive and middle). However, unlike its old counterpart, many Adwan does not agglutinate anymore. Everything is conjugated into a verb except for aspect and mood, which utilize auxilliary verbs and participles. Adwan has two declension paradigms. A verb's declension paradigm depends on its infinitive ending. Verbs in Adwan have two infinitive endings; -an and -en. Along with its declension paradigm, a verb's noun form can be figured out with a given gender and its verb form. Aspect Aspect in Adwan is expressed by means of an auxilliary verb and the verb's aspectual participle. The two auxiliary verbs used in Adwan are the verbs ''to do, "goran", and to have, "faðan", which express the imperfective and the perfect, respectively. These verbs are conjugated and then a verb's participle is used. However, simply knowing what verb to conjugate is not the only thing one must know. Most verbs in Adwan generally use the perfective aspect, which expresses that the action was performed once. However, the imperfective is also used just as much, which expresses an action that habitually occured. Oddly enough, a perfect aspect also exists, which expresses a verb's action being in the process while either interrupted by another process, or just simply precedes a process. In general, the perfective is somewhat close to the simple, indicative tenses in Romance languages in English, while the imperfective is similar to the imperfect tenses in Romance languages, or the continuous in English. Adwan lacks a perfect aspect, or a pluperfect tense. I watched a movie yesterday. --> (Jag) vulát entofá fimu = (I) watched yesterday movie. : While not explicitly stated that the action was completed or not, one knows that a movie was watched and the action occured once. The perfect states actions that an action occured once and was not a habitual action. Yesterday, I was watching a movie. --> (Jag) orái entofá vlag fimu = (I) did yesterday watch movie. : The auxiliary helping verb for the imperfect is to do, which causes some confusion, for to do tends to be an affirmative particle in verbs rather than an auxilliary verb expressing aspect. This expresses that the aspect was ongoing or habitual. -AN Verbs Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine. -EN Verbs Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine. Mood Verbs in Adwan conjugate to mood, apart from aspect, tense and person. The conjugation of moods themselves is not hard, but rather knowing when to use them. Adwan has four moods: the 'indicative, the subjunctive, the imperative, and the conditional. Unlike its past form, where mood was simply indicated by a select number of affixes, Adwan conjugates its verbs in a synthetic manner, changing up the whole endings rather than simply adding on to them. For example: : I would eat --> Mozcysa. Compare this to the simple I eat, mozcas. Note, however, that the conditional is a very weak mood, and is sometimes split into two tenses, as there is only a past conditional and a present conditional. In addition, Adwan's past conditional is purely in the past, as oposed to many languages' use of the perfect to use the past conditional. A verb's conjugation and its mood change depends on the mood. The indicative, for example, does not change up a verb at all, for the default conjugations given are in the indicative. The subjunctive works something like the conditional, only working more with vowel changes, and the imperative simplifies the ending. Subjunctive Mood The subjunctive mood expresses, like in many other languages, wishes, hypothetical statements, and uncertainty. The subjunctive is formed in Adwan by ablaut, save for diphthongs, which are moderately irregular. Note, the subjunctive for some persons -- the third, to be specific -- looks similar either to its noun counterpart, or the verb's participle. Context is used here to differentiate. Also, third person pronouns are generally used, thus avoiding any confusion between a verb and its noun counterpart. -AN Verbs Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine. -EN Verbs Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine. Voice Voice is an important part to Adwan's verbs, for each voice carries a great amount of information depending on its usage. Adwanic verbs are able to be conjugated to three different voices; the Active, the Passive, and the Middle. Like other grammatical functions in a verb, Voice is distinguished by the use of affixes. With that said, the affix used depends on the number of the subject. Negation Verb Forms Infinitive The infinitive marks an uninflected verb. Infinitives are always given in dictionaries, and in Adwan, they end in -an, and -en. For example: We should eat, "eat" is in the inifnitive in English, Spanish, and even French. *Debemos comer. *Nous devrions manger. However, in Adwan, the verb is conjugated with the modality and person, leaving we should eat to be dwamozcesk. Another form of the infinitive seen in many language is the Supine, which is discussed below. Supine The supine in Adwan is distinct from the Supine in many languages, just in the fact that it doesn't utilize the infinitive. In Adwan, the supine is formed by adding the prefix Dgy if the verb starts with a consonant, and Dgyk if it starts with a vowel. The supine is the verbal form used in a noun phrase. In English, it is formed by using the particle "to" which forms the inifnitive. In the phrase'' I want to go home to sleep, ''sleep is in the supine. The supine forms a verb that acts as the cause for the previous verb. Below, the supine is bolded, to help get a stronger understanding of the supine. *I walk outside to run. *I go to school to learn. *I sleep to rest. Spanish puts the preposition a'' or ''para, while French puts pour before the infinitive verbs. Essentially, the supine is like saying So i can..., though it is not limited to person. Verbs in the supine are still conjugated for person, which indicates the person in the so i can... translation. Gerund A gerund in Adwan is a noun form of a verb's action. Unlike a verb's noun form, a gerund nominalizes, essentially, the process of the verb, rather than its original counterpart. For example, the gerund for the noun "a walk" is "walking", in the sense that "walking" is an object, rather than an action, i.e. I like walking, etc. A gerund in Adwan is used as often as an infinitive is, as they have similar uses in many aspects. A verb however, does not have a gerund form, but rather, uses a nominalizing article. For example, since "to walk" is a neuter verb, it takes up the neuter nominalizing article, so to say I like walking, one would say Þauras yċ teldanin. When forming a gerund, a nominalizing article must precede the infintive form of the verb and the infinitive form must be declined according to noun declension rules. Irregular Verbs To see the irregular verbs in Adwan, along with conjugations, view the Irregular Verbs article. Adverbs Adverbs in Adwan are not declined. They have no specific ending, although many of them may share suffixes which are used to use adjectives as adverbs. However, one thing that does restrict adverbs is their placement. While nouns and adjectives don't have specific placement rules, adverbs must ALWAYS follow the part of speech they describe, which is, in most cases, the verb. For example: *She ate a very big meal --> She ate a big very meal. *She gracefully fell from her bicycle --> She fell gracefully from her bicycle. Particles Tag Question Particle A trait shared by many languages, Adwan also features the use of an interrogative particle. Not exactly asking where, when, or why, the interrogative particle acts much like the French particle est-ce, the Polish czy, and the English particle do; it poses a yes or no question. The particle, Je, is usually introduced at the beggining or at the end of the question. Traditionally, it's quite common the the subject pronoun to also be added for emphasis and to even out the tag question particle, however, this only happens if the particle is introduced at the beggining of the sentence. *''Łoruċ pyċu, je? = Do you want pizza?'' *''Je ġu þaùrus łachav za? = Do you like my music?'' However, the particle indeed can be negated. Rather than negating the verb, Adwan negates the particle to pose a question with a predisposed doubt. *''Jeta ġu þaùrus afkruň neìċynuň za? = Do you not like my apples and oranges?'' Note the use of posessive adjectives rather than genitive personal pronouns. Usually, if a tag question particle is used, a sense of informality is established, which means that posessive adjectives are more accepted than the slightly formal genitive pronouns. Conjunctions Conjunctions in Adwan are famous for being odd, especially the Coordinating Conjunctions. Coordinating Conjunctions Coordinating Conjunctions are quite odd, as they work in a rather agglutinative form. Coordinating conjunctions have two forms: one form for clauses, and one form for items. A coordinating conjunction used with clauses is usually a conjunction that connects two sentences together; however, the item conjunctions are simply conjunctions used for items as they are listed or used in such manner. While coordinating conjunctions working with clauses use regular, traditional conjunctions, coordinating conjunctions working with items use proclitics, which are morphemes that function like prefixes, but have their own grammatical meaning (comparable to that of -que in Latin). Note: the Clause form of the coordinating conjunction "so" is identical to the subordinating conjunction for "so that". Subordinating Conjunctions Phrasing Although grammar is crucial to Adwan, there is still the great question of how to put things together. Below is a quick guide on telling time, telling the weather, etc, etc. Weather In many languages, when describing the weather, they simply use the third person singular, and if they are not pro-dropping, they use dummy pronouns. The rules in Adwan are slightly different. In English and French, the dummy pronoun it and il are used to indicate an indefinite noun, usually the weather in context. However, Adwan is slightly different. Rather than not specifying anything at all, Adwan explicitly states what's doing what, therefore to express that it's raining outside, something must take up the subject. In Adwan, everything is referred to using "day" in the general mood, therefore It rains would be The day rains. NOTE: when referring to weather-verbs, the present imperfect is never used, as weather-verbs are never transitive verbs. The usage of this extend to places, too: *''It is raining in Rome'' **''Žol ví Rómmena ďove, which literally says ''Day in Rome rains. Existential Clauses The usage of the pronoun "there" and "y" in English and French are the subjects for existential clauses in those languages. Along with the verb "to be" and "to have", an existential clause is formed, looking something like there is a dog in my house, or il y a un chien chez moi. However, Adwan exist is much more specific in the placing of the existential object. The verb Llyðen, or "to Exist" is used, followed by the place. *''There is a dog in front of my house.'' **''Pöž llyðis jeg nai šússkena'', which literally says Dog exists before my house. General statements with specified location uses the noun poùl, or, which roughly -- but not directly -- translates to "else-where/some-where". *''There are dogs and cats!'' **''Poulá, pözcet neimiwang llyðum!, which literally says ''(At) Elsewhere, dogs and cats exist. Note, it is incredibly common, however, to not only drop poùl, but the replaced "exist" with "to be". Because Adwan's declension rules lead predicates to be in the accusative, however, the most common -- and still grammatically correct -- form of expressing existential clauses is simply to have the subject just be. *''There are dogs and cats!'' **''Pözcet neimiwang þyla!'' literally translates to Dogs and cats are! Category:Languages Category:Featured